


A Sad, Sad Place Without You

by unfolded73



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Maureen Swan-Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 17:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10904502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Emma and Killian’s daughter learns that her father died, and has some questions.





	A Sad, Sad Place Without You

The first sign that something was wrong was the way Maureen launched herself into Killian’s arms when he picked her up from school. Not that she wasn’t an affectionate child, she was, but she was usually too distracted by tales of her day in first grade to concern herself with things like hugs for her father. She would skip down the street half a block ahead of him as he walked her home, pausing every now and then to tell him about a happening at school or to pepper him with questions. But today, she walked quietly at his side, her hand holding tightly to his.

The second sign was when he opened her lunch box to find most of her lunch uneaten, her ham sandwich flattened, but otherwise untouched.

“Maureen, why don’t you come here and eat the sandwich you didn’t eat for lunch, hmm?”

She looked up from where she was sprawled out on the living room floor, drawing a picture. “Not hungry, Daddy.”

He approached her. “But you barely ate anything today.”

She shrugged, not meeting his eyes.

Kneeling down, Killian pressed his hand against her forehead. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“No, Daddy.” There was a slight tremble in her voice, and it set off alarm bells for Killian. Maureen could be a surprisingly guarded child when something was worrying her; she was very like her mother in that way.

“Come here, love.” He took her hand and gently pulled her up from the floor, guiding her over to the sofa. Once he had her sitting securely on his lap, he looked into her face. “Tell me what happened at school to make you so glum.”

“Darcy was telling lies,” she said, tucking her head up under his chin.

Killian rolled his eyes. Darcy was a little girl in her class who for whatever reason, seemed to be Maureen’s nemesis, if a six-year-old child could have a nemesis. This wasn’t the first time that she had come home with stories of the transgressions of Darcy, but it was the first time she had seemed so affected by them.

“What lies, sweetness?” He shifted slightly so that her bottom didn’t cut off the circulation in his leg quite so effectively, his hand rubbing her back.

“Darcy said her mom said you were dead an’ then came back alive. But I know that’s not true ‘cause when you’re dead you’re gone forever. Neal said so.”

Killian grimaced, unsure of where to start with any of this. Instead of getting to the heart of the issue, he skirted around it.

“When did Neal say so?”

“When Charlotte died, ‘member?”

Charlotte was her uncle Neal’s guinea pig, and Killian did remember there had been a bit of family tragedy in the Charming household last year when Neal awoke one day to find Charlotte stiff and cold. Maureen had taken it hard when they’d gone over for dinner to find that the guinea pig was no longer in residence, and Emma and Snow had comforted her over it. He wished that he’d paid more attention to what they had said at the time.

Killian sighed, wishing that Emma was home and could help him navigate these choppy seas. “It is almost always true that when someone dies, they’re gone from this world forever. But it’s not a lie, what Darcy said. A long time ago, before you were born, I did die, but I was brought back to life.”

Maureen jerked away from him, looking up into his eyes. Her expression was hard to read. “How did you die?”

He thought furiously, knowing Maureen wasn’t ready for the whole story of what had happened that year. “There was a… dark magic that was threatening Storybrooke. And I made a mistake, and I made things worse, and everyone we love was in danger because of it. But I knew that if I sacrificed my life, Mommy and Henry and Grandma and Grandpa and everyone else would be safe. So that’s what I did.”

“Why did _you_ have to do it? Why couldn’t Mommy an’ Regina fight it with magic?”

He smiled. He knew that a lot of Maureen’s sense of safety in this town came from the fervent belief that her mother’s magic, especially when combined with the magic of Aunt Regina, could do anything. The last thing he wanted to do was to shake that security. “This was a special dark magic that only I could stop, because… because it was partly my fault that it was here. Because I made a mistake.”

“What did you do?”

Killian pulled his daughter into his chest for another hug. He couldn’t explain to her about being a Dark One, could he? That would be way too scary for her to deal with, the idea that both of her parents had been tied to that darkness, however briefly. But he didn’t see any way around at least hinting at it. “There was a time when a darkness threatened the town, and the only way for your mommy to stop it was to take some of that darkness inside her.”

“Because she’s the Savior.”

“Exactly. And your mommy is so strong that even though she had that dark magic in her, she fought it. She held that darkness off, and was still so full of light…” He swallowed against a sudden lump in his throat. He hadn’t thought of Camelot for a long time. “She was so full of light that I fell even more in love with her than I already was. That was when I started to think that we should get married, your mother and me, although I didn’t say anything to her yet.”

Maureen loved hearing the story of their wedding, but he could tell by the stubborn set of her jaw that she wasn’t going to be distracted from the important part of this story. “Then what happened?” she asked.

“We had a battle, and I got cut with a magic sword.”

Maureen squirmed on his lap, practically vibrating with curiosity at the mention of a magic sword. “What kind of magic sword?”

“It was a bad sword, filled with very dark magic. And a wound from this sword would never heal. I was going to die.” He rubbed her back again, hoping he wasn’t making a terrible mistake in relaying this tale. “So your mommy saved me from dying the only way she could; by putting some of the darkness that she carried into me as well.”

Maureen’s eyes were very wide. “Then what did you do?”

“Well, I’m not strong like your mommy.”

“That’s not true,” Maureen protested.

“I wasn’t strong enough not to listen to the darkness, and I did something that threatened our family. But in the end, I made a right choice, and I got the darkness out of both of us. It was just that I had to die so that everyone else could be safe.”

“Why didn’t you stay dead?”

Killian breathed a sigh of relief at having gotten past the worst part of the story. “Because your mother loved me so much that she came down into the Underworld to get me out.”

“So when someone dies, we can go get them and bring them back?”

 _Shit._ “No, love. It was very dangerous what she did, and moreover it didn’t really work. She had to leave the Underworld without me.”

Maureen looked at him with a skeptical expression that said, _well, clearly not._

“We thought that was the end of the story, but it wasn’t. Because Mommy had another battle to face: a battle against Hades, who ruled the Underworld. He had escaped, and while your mother was fighting him up here in Storybrooke, I was helping her find the weapon she needed from down in the Underworld. Because even though we were separated by death, true love kept us connected.”

“Mommy won?”

“Yes, with the help of our family and friends, she won. And even _that_ wasn’t the end of the story, as it turned out, because I was visited by Zeus, who rules all the gods. He told me he was going to send me where I belonged, and the next thing I knew…” Killian closed his eyes, the memory of seeing Emma running toward him in that graveyard suddenly flashing in his mind. “The next thing I knew, I was back here with our family. Alive.” He picked up her small hand and pressed it against the pulse point in his neck. “Feel that? That’s my heartbeat, just like the one you have.” Maureen mashed her fingers against his neck, feeling his heartbeat for a moment, then moved her fingers to touch her neck, feeling for her own pulse.

“Gods can make someone alive again?” she asked.

“I guess they can sometimes, but they almost never do.” He hugged her tight against his chest. “Do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think that the gods knew that Maureen Swan-Jones needed to exist in the world, and that bringing me back to life was the only way to make that happen.” He kissed the top of her head, her brown curls soft against his lips. “They sent me back in order to create you, because they knew that the world would be a sad, sad place without you in it.”

She accepted that statement as fact the way only a small child would.

“Was Mommy sad when you were dead?”

“Yes, love, she was very sad. But she was also stubborn, and determined to save me.” Even after all these years, he still marveled at Emma’s strength of will, and that she had considered him worthy of such efforts.

Maureen looked up, her eyes narrowing. “You say _I’m_ stubborn, but like it’s bad.”

Killian laughed. “When you refuse to eat your spinach, I would wish that you were less stubborn, to be sure. But when you grow up, if you turn that stubbornness on someone who is threatening the people you love, then I’ll be proud.”

“Just like Mommy,” she said, nodding firmly.

“Exactly so.”

“Daddy?” She wiggled off of his lap. “Can I have a snack?”

Killian raised an eyebrow. “You can have the sandwich that you left in your lunchbox.”

Maureen frowned. “I don’t want that, I want a _snack_.”

Rolling his eyes, he stood up. “Come, my stubborn lass. Let us see if we can reach some kind of accord on this field of battle.” Taking her small hand in his, he led her into the kitchen.


End file.
